When elbows come down, let’s lean on each other

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/03/2025 (208 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I’m going to tell you something embarrassing. Lean in closer. Closer still. I gotta whisper because it is humiliating.

Every day, I Google “What’s going on with the tariffs right now?”

Do you know? Because I barely do.

The tariffs are coming. The tariffs are not coming — yet. The tariffs are here. Just kidding! The tariffs are coming in 30 days. Maybe. The tariffs might be coming every 30 days just to keep us on our toes. Maybe the tariffs will never come. Maybe they are already here.

We’re taking American wine off the shelves. We’re putting American wine back on the shelves. We’re taking American wine off the shelves. We’re putting— oop, no, we’re going to leave it off the shelves.

It’s not just the tariffs that are leaving me feeling clueless and whiplashed. I see measles is back. Google “How worried should I be about measles?” Google “Is my childhood MMR vaccine still effective?”

Even more benign things are making me feel like this. Oh, I see we’re mad about the Winnipeg Folk Festival lineup. We’re mad at the people who are mad about the folk fest lineup. We’re not mad about the folk fest lineup. We’re not mad about the folk fest lineup, just disappointed.

Everything is dumb and bad and just to add insult to injury, when daylight savings time starts this weekend, our bodies won’t even know what time it is.

Things feel particularly chaotic and uncertain, is what I’m saying.

Living in These Unprecedented Times — oh yes, we have new Unprecedented Times and they are somehow worse than the previously Unprecedented Times which, alas, became Precedented Times — is like what I imagine being in the eye of a hurricane to feel like.

It’s the calm before the storm but the storm is already here.

It feels a lot like this time five years ago, when we were eyeing a new virus that would rearrange our lives over and over again in ways we didn’t know were possible. (Speaking of, what’s going on with COVID these days, other than the fact people still get it? What vaccine schedule should I be following?)

You’ll recall that the pandemic was also an ever-changing news event with rapidly evolving health orders that were also hard to keep up with — especially after the pandemic fatigue settled in thick and heavy and people began turning on each other.

We’re singing Happy Birthday and washing our hands. We’re Lysolling our groceries. Now we’re masking. We’re not using cloth masks, we’re using medical masks. We’re not using medical masks, we’re using respirators. No, we’re using medical masks. Oh, you’re still masking?

We’re in Code Red. We’re in Code Orange. We’re in Code Red. We’re in Code Yellow.

You can have a bubble. You can see your immediate family. You can have gatherings of no more than five, no more than 50, no more than 150.

There’s one new case. There are a dozen new cases. There are hundreds of new cases. There are thousands of new cases. We’ve stopped counting the cases.

We want vaccines. We’re celebrating vaccines. We’re rejecting vaccines. We’ve stopped getting vaccines.

We’re banging pots and pans for front-line workers. We’re honking car horns for “freedom.”

My biggest fear, as the pandemic receded from view, is that we’d go through all of this and have learned nothing.

So if there’s one thing I hope about these new whiplash-filled times, it’s that Canadians don’t turn on each other.

I am convinced this will-they, won’t-they tariff situation is purposely designed to keep us on edge and exhaust us.

Because we will get tired. After all, you can only keep your elbows up for so long. We have to be able to lean on each other.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com